I had never actually met Mr. Fall, but when we did meet he said he was
pleased to know me, so that was all right.
“You will, of course, have a cocktail,” he said.
“Of course,” we said.
“My own particular make,” Mr. Fall told us. “Instead of shaking them I
stir them with a shagreen shoe-horn steeped in Chartreuse.”
“Perfect it is,” I assured him.
With the cocktails were caviare sandwiches.
“They go together very well,” said George Tarlyon. When they had gone,
we dined.
Somewhere near us, but not in the room, sang a _ukelele_: near enough to
be enjoyed, far enough not to distract, a gentle noise, a mezzotint
noise, unrecognisable and remote.
And then in the fulness of time, the table was cleared, and there was
coffee.
“You will like the brandy,” said Mr. Fall, as Tarlyon hesitated on the
butler’s question. We liked the brandy very much.
“Leave it,” said Mr. Fall; and the butler left us.
“It’s like this,” he began; and he put both elbows on the table, and in
one hand he waved a cigar and with the other he caressed his chin.
Seriously he glanced from one to the other of us; he was a man with a
courteous eye.
“It’s like this,” Mr. Fall addressed Tarlyon. “I asked you to dinner,
Lord Tarlyon, not only because of the very real pleasure I take in your
company, but because I want your advice--your advice,” said Mr. Fall,
“as an Englishman of honour. And for yours, too, Mr. Trevor, I shall be
very much obliged. Have some brandy.”
“You see,” said Mr. Fall, “I am not a gentleman. I am not even quite a
gentleman. My birth and upbringing, though they have fitted me for very
much, have not fitted me to decide on certain matters with that
clearness of vision and decision which I find so admirable in men of
breeding....”
Tarlyon made a faint noise which sounded like “Ah....”
“To men like you,” Mr. Fall continued, “there are not two ways of doing
a thing: there is only a right way; and that, with you, is the
instinctive way. Whereas for me there is also the right way, but there
are other ways as well, and sometimes I find myself wandering up these
other ways and wondering if they are not quite as right as the right
way, even though they are more convenient. In matters of policy there
are two sides to every question; and I sometimes wonder if, in matters
of honour, there are not also two sides to every question....”
“There are,” said George Tarlyon. “But one of them is a precipice....”
“Exactly, Lord Tarlyon. And that is why I am about to put before you the
case of myself and a lady, as discreetly as possible of course, so that
you can advise me what to do--as a man of honour. Or rather, so that you
can support me in going on doing what I am already doing, or encourage
me to change my course towards what, I frankly admit, will be a happy
fulfilment for me. Have some brandy.”
Mr. Fall, in the interests of his country at war, had frequently had
occasion to voyage on board a cruiser of His Majesty’s Fleet, and had
thus acquired that finished courtesy which presumes a man has drunk
nothing before the glass you are offering him.
“I may say,” Mr. Fall continued, “that at the age of fifty-two I know as
little about ladies as I did when I was twenty, when I didn’t know any.
Perhaps it is because I have always been a very busy man, perhaps it is
because I do not attract them enough----”
“Or perhaps it’s because you attract them too much,” Tarlyon suggested.
“Of course,” Mr. Fall admitted, “one is agreeable financially; and a
knowledge of that fact has sometimes, I am afraid, caused me to
reconsider an invitation to dinner which the night before had seemed
full of friendship, and, perhaps, possibilities of a kind which I am not
too old to think romantic. However....”